Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 - April 18, 1955). His name is synonymous with great intelligence, and his face is one of the most recognizable in the world. The latter is largely thanks to Arthur Sasse, the press photographer who captured the German-Swiss-American theoretical physicist in a remarkably unexpected pose.
The Photograph that Allowed Geniuses to Have a Sense of Humor. That is how the world-famous black-and-white image has come to be known. Sasse took the photograph on the campus of Princeton University in the United States on March 14, 1951, the day Einstein celebrated his 72nd birthday.
The photograph shows Einstein in the back seat of a car, with Frank Aydelotte, then director of the Institute for Advanced Study, to his left and Aydelotte's wife to his right.
What made the man behind E = mc2 stick out his tongue? The story goes that the Nobel laureate and the Aydelottes had just returned from a celebration held in Einstein's honor. Although they were already in the car, a crowd of reporters and photographers kept pestering Einstein.
Yet another request to smile for a birthday photograph even prompted Einstein to exclaim, 'That’s enough, that’s enough!' It made little difference: the journalists kept asking questions and the photographers kept taking pictures. When nothing else seemed likely to free him from his pursuers, the weary revolutionary of the theory of relativity had only one option left: he stuck out his tongue…
Einstein loved the mischievous-boy photograph, which also showed his companions, so much that he cropped it to leave only himself in the frame. He then reproduced the 'manipulated' image and sent it to friends as a greeting card. This is the version that became embedded in popular culture, a photograph that shows Einstein was not only a genius, but also one cool dude.
